Tips to Increase Email Open Rates

Email marketing is an effective way to communicate the value of a brand to prospective and existing customers and sell more product, but 74% of emails are never opened.

The practice of email marketing can be complex but with a few tips, you’ll not only increase the percentage of emails sent that are ultimately opened by recipients, but generate a better response in the process and, accelerate your Web success.

Here are 5 tips to increase your email marketing campaign’s open rate to help you get started:

Improve Email Sender Reputation

Businesses sending email to their customers must maintain a good reputation with the ISP’s (Internet Service Providers). The way to do that is to adopt authentication protocols – SenderID, SPF and DKIM – and prove to those ISP that your business (the sender) is who it claims to be. These solutions are provided by email service provider (ESP) and can dramatically improve the actual delivery rate of emails and increase the percentage of emails that get opened by recipients.

Remove Inactive Subscribers from Your List

A bigger list of emails is not necessarily always better for your marketing campaign. If recipients aren’t opening the emails sent, it is possible you are putting your future email campaigns in jeopardy. ISPs take into consideration not just your current reputation, but how often and frequently recipients interact (open and click) emails. When the activity rate is too low, email campaign could suffer. To reduce this risk, remove those that have not engaged in meaningful activity in a specific period of time – such as six months or one year.

Get Creative with Subject Lines

Email subject lines receive a lot of attention from businesses and for good reason – they are very important to the success of your email marketing campaigns. Creating subject lines which are personal, action-oriented and engaging is necessary in order to stand out in the very crowded inbox of your email recipients. Test variations of your subject lines (which most email service providers offer) and see what works best in different scenarios, and continually change (and test) those subject lines to maintain high open rates.